7 smart and sassy crime fiction writers dish on writing and life.
It's The View. With bodies.

Friday, May 29, 2015

What I Know for Sure

Hank Phillippi Ryan: Lee Child said
Rachel Howzell Hall’s“Detective Elouise Norton is the
best new character you'll meet this year.”
Publishers Weekly raved:

“Dead-on dialogue and atmospheric details help propel a
tale full of tormenting moral issues.”

We bonded first over
our shared editor—then in person, each of us talking a mile a minute, at
Bouchercon. Her new book SKIES OF ASH is just out, and it is amazing. May I
just say—her voice is like nothing you’ve ever read. Here’s
a snippet from an earlier book:

"Resentments are quiet, evil things--snails in a
vegetable garden. They chew away at your heart and you never realize that
you’re the mean old lady who never smiles and yells at kids to stay off her
lawn.”

Ah.

Rachel’s on
book tour now—check her website to find where to meet her in person. But over
the past few years, she’s had some realizations. And, happily for Jungle Reds,
is letting us all in on them.

Skies of Ash is my fifth novel, and the second of
my Detective Elouise Norton series. In addition to being a novelist, I work as
a fundraising writer for City of Hope, a national leader in cancer research and
treatment. So, I know some things about writing. Not everything – I’m still
learning -- but enough to create a list. Here’s what I’ve discovered since
picking up a pen to write as a professional so many (many) years ago.

1

.1. Books (and blog posts and articles) don’t
write themselves.
I know, right? You can have a laptop filled to capacity with Word, Scrivener, Dramatica
and Page Four; you can have diagrams and tables, generators and prompts, but
none of it matters if you don’t string ‘em together into sentences, chapters,
pages of coherent story.

2 2. It’s all gravy. No one has to read anything you
write. No one has to buy any of your books. It’s not law. No one goes to jail
for ignoring you and choosing A Shore
Thing. Celebrate each time someone buys something you wrote. It can always
be worse.

3 3. Cops don’t outline dead bodies with chalk. Keep up with the advances in your
field—be it crime, techno-thriller, even romance. It’s your job. Even if it’s
fiction, readers still want to learn. So: no chalk outlines. No smell of
gunpowder in the room, pistols don’t use magazines. STDs are real, yo. Russia
is no longer the Soviet Union. In Skies
of Ash, I turned to friends and family to learn about fire, insurance and
bad marriages (heh). Take some time to learn.

4 4. Writing will make you sad. Sometimes, folks just don’t give a
fuck about your writing. Sometimes, you
don’t give a fuck about your writing. Sometimes, characters die because they
have to. In Skies of Ash, it broke my
heart to write about dead kids. It’s okay to be sad. But then, snap out of it. Write.
Don’t make the good fairy take your gift away and give it to that guy over
there. That guy sucks and he doesn’t deserve it.

5 5. Writing will make you happy. Sometimes, the words will roll off
your mind, gush from your fingertips onto the computer keys and onto the blank
white screen. Sometimes, your characters do as you ask and you fall in love
with them again. Sometimes, you’ll get a great review. Maybe you’ll even win an
award. That sentence? You wrote that sentence. And yes, you are da bomb.

66. Taxes are a bitch. Unless you’re rolling in James
Patterson money, you’ll make enough in advances or royalties to piss you off.
Keep receipts. Try and pay estimated taxes.

7 7. You are a bitch. See #4. Everything sucks, huh,
Cranky Mc Crankypants? How much did that guy
get for his ‘book’? Who gets to be on
the panel at the Times Book Festival?

8 8. Writers are weird. Embrace your strangeness—how you
write down names you like, or use Evernote to save all the weird ways people
die. Our Google searches are obscene, and our libraries are filled with How To
[insert weird thing here]. You think normal people sit down and write 100,000+
words about a possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury? You think normal people write about
human sweetbreads consumed with fava beans and a nice Chianti? I think not.

9. There is a difference between a cheap
pen and a Uniball.
See #8 Artists use tools-don’t be ashamed of that. Wide- or college-ruled legal
pads. Yellow stickie notes or lined stickie notes. Highlighters with
see-through barrels or those gel ones that seemed kinda cool but are a little
strange and leave crayon-like wax on your manuscript? For Valentine’s Day, my
husband gave me a $60 gift card to Office Depot because he knows.

1 10. If you really want to write, you’ll
find time to do it. A pox on that, ‘I really want to write but I can’t find the time.’
Malarkey. Balderdash. Did you watch the Red Wedding episode of Game of Thrones? Did you eat that entire
pint of Chunky Monkey? Wanna know why? Cuz you wanted to. An hour and three minutes—every episode of GOT. An hour and three minutes—how long
it takes to eat a pint Chunky Monkey. An hour and three minutes—how long it
takes to write a decent chapter. If you wanna do something, you’ll do it.

1

I 11. It’s never enough. I landed a book contract. Now, I want
another book contract. I have ten book reviews, I want fifty more. I want to
win a Rotary Club Certificate of Excellence, an Edgar, a National Book Prize, a
Pulitzer, a Nobel Prize, and… and… God. I want to be God. Or Stephen King.

1 12. Books rule. Digital or hardcover, you don’t give
an effin’ eff. Cuz words: writers dig ‘em, like for real. A sentence like Junot
Diaz’s ‘The half life of love is forever,’ and you just keep reading it and
reading it and whistling like it’s some amalgamation of Neil Tyson Degrasse’s
mind, Derek Jeter’s body, Warren Buffet’s wealth, Richard Simmons’s spirit, Angelina
Jolie’s cheekbones and sea-salt caramel bacon potato chips. Because wow… words.
And to those ‘writers’ who don’t actively read? We’ll know you by your flat
description, your trite and clichéd sentences and your ‘dark and stormy nights.’

1 13. Nothing beats the journey. As Dickens wrote, ‘Ride on!
Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on!’ In this life,
we lose, we win, we celebrate and mourn. Health. Jobs. Relationships. The
lottery. Bankruptcy. All of this, even the bad, enriches a writer, colors every
page she’ll ever write. But look up from the page sometimes. Look up and look
around—and marvel and wince and laugh. Because the best writing? Comes from
people who live.

HANK: Oh, Rachel,
you make me cry. And that is a good thing. So Reds, tell us one thing YOU’VE learned
about life. I’ll start, with something I said to Jonathan the other day as we
were sitting in traffic. “Enjoy this!” I
said. “It’s life, it’s hilarious.” And
about writing? What I say to myself: “The
next fabulous idea is just around the corner. I promise, it is.

(Now I want
some of those sea salt caramel bacon potato chips. If they don’t exist, let’s make
some!)

*******************

RACHELHOWZELL HALL is the author of Skies of Ash(Forge), the second in her
new mystery series featuring LAPD Homicide Detective Elouise Norton. The first,
Land of Shadows, received a starred
review from Publisher’s Weekly, and
was included on the Los Angeles Times’ “143
Books to Read This Summer” and the U.K Telegraph’s “Top Ten Crime Books for
Summer.” Rachel was also a featured novelist on NPR’s acclaimed ‘Crime in the
City’ series. Her first
novel,A Quiet Storm, was
a featured selection of Borders’ Original Voices program, as well as an
alternate selection of the Black Expressions book club.She
is a writer/assistant development director at City of Hope, a national leader
in cancer research and treatment. Rachel
lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.

27 comments:

Thank you, Rachel, for those very wise words and congratulations on your new book.Something I’ve learned about life? Kindness counts. Friends are a gift to be cherished and laughter is the smile of the soul.

RACHELLLLLLLLL!!! HAAAAAAAAANK!!! Damn! I would've won the Billings Preaching Prize with this blog today. On Sunday my altar call would've scared the cross off the wall! And nobody woulda snuck off to help the collation ladies downstairs in the kitchen. Nope. Nope. Nope, nope, nope. Wow. And thank you.

Wow, Rachel. Great tips, great writing. Thank you. I clearly need to add your books to my TBR pile. What I've learned? Corollary to Joan's: don't be a jerk. Also, live with no regrets. I took a big risk to leave my day job two years ago to write crime fiction full time - and now I have three multi-book contracts and am loving it. But it was scary!

Wise words, Rachel. Posting this on my fridge for whenever I take myself too seriously or fall into the pit of despond. Right now feels like I'm flying without, not sure what the book will end up being. And my advice is always the same: just hold your nose and write.

Oh I love this sooo much, Rachel and Hank. I just shared it on my FB page (with a warning that I may stalk you at Bouchercon until Hank introduces us!) Just kidding. Well sort of. Would love to meet you and have you sign one of your books if you go to B'con this year.Like Kaye, I'm tempted to print this out and carry it around with me!

I love this with the heat of a thousand suns (yes, Ramona - I'm still using that phrase). Pardon me for a second while I go off to add you to my TBR pile. That snippet alone is enough.

This is such great advice. All of it. I will definitely save it for those "fraud" moments when I think I suck and no one will ever read anything I wrote.

I've picked up "If not now, when?" and "Just hold your nose and write" from Hank and Hallie. And I'm a firm believer in "if you want to do it, you'll find the time." What have I learned? Every day that I wake up and get to write is a gift. Don't waste it!

What a great list, Rachel. And Ramona: cheerleader for the damned. Is that a good thing, or not?

The most important thing I've learned is "let it be". Things, even really bad things, happen for a reason. We may not know or understand the reason right now, but it will eventually come clear, and if we are open to it we'll see that the Higher Power knows better than we do. Trying to force our square peg lives into round holes is an exercise in futility.

Thanks for reading, y'all, and for sharing things you also know. We always hear how writing is a solo thing, introverts, and all the rest. While this is true, I've started to notice that writing is also like the Great Barrier Reef. We all learn and share and take what we've learned and shared to build these incredible things called Books.

Wow, it's like you've read my mind! I'm heading straight to Amazon to look up your books! What have I learned about life? Remember the good parts and forget the rest. Going over and over something that made you angry/sad/unhappy will only ruin the moment you could be enjoying right now.

Ah, Rachel, this post makes me love you even more than I already do. I am printing it out and hanging it on my bulletin board. Loved Lou the first time around, and I'm champing at the bit to read SKIES OF ASH, which is sitting on my bedside table. Wishing you a lifetime full of terrific book deals!!

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful post. Thanks to Rachel, whose books I will now go order, and thanks to Reds for bringing it to us. What have I learned? In the writing life, it's the one Rachel and everyone else knows: books get written by gluing fingers to keyboard and butt to desk chair. There is no other way. IN life? I'd go with never pass up a chance to celebrate, to do something that makes you happy, to do something kind. Because the time when you can't comes along no matter what.

Rachel, you had me at "Resentments are quiet, evil things--like snails in a vegetable garden." Fabulous. And isn't it great that reading someone else's perfect sentence can make us want to jump up and down with delight???

Just one life thing, Hank? That's so hard. But--read books. Reading makes bad days bearable, and good days fabulous. Books are always your friends. You can meet new ones, and you can go back to old ones. And books keep us human.

Oh, hell yes! If this post doesn't fire you up and get you shouting hallelujah, then you must be devoid of breath or brain activity. Rachel Howzell Hall, I have officially fallen in love with you. The only possible next step is to order your books and read them. Oh, and I will be joining Kristi in stalking you at Bouchercon this fall. I have already begun my stalking by checking the Bouchercon attendee list, and I'm not worried that your name is listed yet, because there is no way that you are going to disappoint me and other by not attending. Powering up my super will ray. I think that the number of people here, including me, who want to print out this post today indicates what an effective writer and personality you are, Rachel. Heck, I'm even going to go out and finally buy the new printer I need just to be able to keep this post close.

The snippet that Hank offers up to us is one of those moments in reading that you just have to stop and marvel at the perfection of words, their beauty and power. As Hank says, "Ah." It's a reaction that expresses the supreme satisfaction of a reader, the same reaction I had at the end of your post, Rachel.

A lesson learned in life? Life's teachers often come in the guise of the seemingly most ordinary of individuals in the most ordinary of situations. Writing lesson for me is to write honestly, being myself and not someone I think I should be.

Loved reading this post after a morning from hell doing my other job, which is the best reality check I have to motivate my writing. One thing popped out at me. It is so comforting to know others share this affliction called writing. #9 reminds me that there are others out there who would prefer a shopping trip at Staples to one at Sephoria. We may all be weird, but we are kindred.

All I can say ----- is --- I agree with ALL of the comments and hope we can all take a lesson from this wonderful author and be more frank and open in our own writing!!! Thelma Straw in Manhattan - where you have to be somewhat open and frank just to exist 24 hours any day!!!!!